


Magical Husbandry 101

by TanTales



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dragons, F/M, but i mean only techincally, sorry - Freeform, technically urban fantasy, there is not enough world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 10:28:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7570651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TanTales/pseuds/TanTales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In order to get her proper magical certificate, and finally be able to join a coven, Yachi needs to prove that she is capable to handle magical animals. Which, in other words mean that she will have to take care of dragons. Dragons. Both incredibly expensive and hard to find. Thankfully her mentor had given her a very good offer she could not refuse. Taking care of a dragon egg can't be that difficult, right?<br/>Unless the only dragon carer was one of her classmates. On whom she may or may not have a small crush on. Or more like: she definitely had an incredibly big and embarrassing crush on.<br/>Why was life always so hard?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Magical Husbandry 101

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chromyrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chromyrose/gifts).



> I hope you are having a nice summer!  
> I am so sorry for this! I lost the original work I had done for you in a computer accident; so I wrote this as a replacement, but it is not as long as the first one and I ended up writing a completely different thing (originally it was just a normal 'taking care of an egg' class assignment, but I couldn't bring myself to write it again).  
> Also my internet situation has been very dodgy recently because I am working at a summer camp, so this is the work that has taken the longest to upload. I had no idea the internet could be this slow :p  
> Anyways, I hope you have a nice time :D

She wished the world would just swallow her. She always wanted that, but this time she meant it. She considered transmuting into an ostrich, so she could at least burrow her head and shout, but that would make it worse. Also, she had no idea how to transmute her own body. She could make basic transformations to nearby objects, on good days being able to transform a medium sized object, but she could definitely not make herself an ostrich.  


Picking up transmutation, with all the hard topics and horrible consequences, sounded easier than this at least. Because in order to finish her formal magic education, and finally be accepted into the coven, she would have to prove an ability to take care for magical creatures.  


Dragons included.  


Dragons mainly.  


Dragons, because they were the only magical creatures that the underground paranatural society in her city accepted. Since ‘magicians’ had appropriated bunnies in the worst way, using it for their tricks they dared to call magic, they had been dropped of the acceptable magical animal list. Jackalopes had been the next to go from the list, with her similarities with bunnies and all. And sadly her city had never been good at attracting magical creatures, because a peryton made it her territory ages ago. Which meant that the only animals she could use were dragons in captivity.  


Which were both incredibly expensive and hard to find. Dragons will be dragons, duh. But her mentor had given her a very good offer she could not refuse. Instead of taking care of a full grown dragon, she could instead take care of a dragon egg until it hatched, and thus be able to show the correct skills for ‘magical husbandry’, or whatever fancy term the coven had settled on this year.  


It would have been an amazing offer; too good to be true even, if there was not a little drawback. The only dragon master in the city at the moment was one of Yachi’s classmates, because the proper dragon master was on a yearlong self-discovery trip to the Bermuda’s. Said classmate was someone who she may or may not have a small crush on. Or more like: she definitely had an incredibly big and embarrassing crush on.  


And that was her current dilemma, which brought her in front of a non-descriptive closed supermarket at 3 am. Because yes, that was the only time in which the paranatural community made business at. Partly because of the secrecy, and partly because half the community either couldn’t physically sleep, or had a nasty habit of taking way too many stimulants.  


As Yachi’s magic had gotten stronger, she had started to switch to the first category in the sleep side of the argument, but her natural nervousness had always made it easy for her to operate on so called Magical Hours.  


The streets were desert, with the exception of Yachi and the shadows of the night. The supermarket was on one of those areas of the city which parents warn their children about, and where people usually recommend not going out after the sunset. Normal citizens had no idea that most of those rumours were ideas implanted artificially on them in order to protect The Community.  


She knocked three times, sharp and strong. It was unlike the usual way she would knock a door, usually tending for a weak, lonely knock followed by the silence and her nervous fidgeting. But she needed to show that she actually knew who was on the other side of the door, and that she was meant to be there.  


Once she heard the steps, she properly considered running away and completely foregoing magic in favour of a career as a trash collector. Life would definitely be easier. However, it was too late. The boy had opened the door, wearing Pokemon pyjama pants and a sleep shirt that was way too large on him.  


He looked too cute.  


Way too cute.  


Yachi really wanted to run away and hide until she was too old to be recognised. She wouldn’t be able to do this. Before she managed to put in place his escape to Cameroon, Yamaguchi started to blush and try to hide as much of pyjamas as possible.  


_This is it, I’ve screwed it all up_ , she thought.  


“Oh lord, I am so sorry, I shouldn’t have come and –” she started to mumble as fast as possible, but she was quickly stopped by his own mumbled apologies.  


At the end, after a weird dance of awkward silences and half-baked apologies, they both started to nervously laugh and smile. Yachi regretted every single life decision that had taken her to that point of her life, but at the time was also glad because Yamaguchi did had an incredibly sweet laugh that she just loved too much.  


“I guess you are not here for the history homework,” he joked “mostly because it would be me who would need your help rather than the other way round.”  


“Yes, no, I mean, I am not here for the homework, you are right.”  


“Are you here because of your animal care requirement? Or what is it called now, mystical husbandry? Sorry, I am not really up-to-date with coven terminology.”  


“It’s okay, don’t worry, I don’t think no one is. I mean, probably the coven people who make them? I don’t know. Oh sorry you probably are not interested in that, but yes it is magical husbandry now. And you are right, I am here for the magical husbandry unit, sorry to bother you.”  


He smiled, and let her into the shop. The shelves looked like every other supermarket she had been to, but she noticed signs here and there that indicated that some products were specifically made for magical consumption. Normal costumers usually kept away from such products with the promise of a bad experience, such as the shrimp-cucumber-vinegar flavoured Oreos and instant noodles which took 2 hours to cook under the sun and only came in broccoli-strawberry flavour.  


She walked carefully, trying her best to avoid walking into one of the shelves, and soon he had led her to the back, which was properly illuminated and looked like any normal employee rest area of a supermarket. Yamaguchi’s history homework was covering one of the tables, half completed with neat hand writing.  


“You sure you are not here for the homework?”  


“I could help you if you want, I finished it yesterday and because we are doing different topics it wouldn’t count as cheating, I think.”  


“Don’t worry! I was joking, I only have the write down part to do, so it will be alright.” Yamaguchi said quickly, stopping her before she actually started to help him with his essay on the history of the refrigerator. “You are here for the dragons, so we should go do that.”  


The dragon enclosure was a massive underground structure which had enough space for three adult dragons to fly comfortably and two baby dragons to grow. As a general rule Dragon Houses, such as the one for which Yamaguchi worked for, didn’t take wild dragons, but hatched them and raised them themselves. Captivity dragons were not as protective of their eggs as their wild counterparts, making egg harvesting a viable business.  


Eggs from dragons in captivity were not as magical as the ones from wild dragons, explained Yamaguchi; yet they still were able to carry a baby dragon to term if it was properly taken care of. And there was the issue, eggs in captivity were not usually taken care of properly because the adult dragons were not particularly overzealous of them.  


And that was where Yachi’s work began. She would have to become the equivalent of a wild dragon for the egg.  


“I’ve never seen one hatch, if I am honest.” Admitted Yamaguchi, while he saw Yachi carefully examine the eggs. “So you are going to have to tell me all the details.”  


“What do you mean you haven’t have seen one hatch before? I thought it was part of your job to take care of the dragons.”  


“Well, yes, but since I joined the Dragon House back at the beginning of high school, we haven’t had to get new dragons. The small dragons you see there are actually four year olds. The blue one is a Small Gabor and won’t grow much more, while the green one is a Yellow Moist, which don’t reach maturity until they are twenty, so it is more of a toddler than anything else.”  


“So you have never taken care of an egg before?”  


“No, you will have to teach me how to do it.”  


Yachi couldn’t believe it. She knew that dragon births were not that common, the mere fact that they had been two in the last five years was already quite unusual. But, but… A dragon keeper had to know how to keep an egg! It was such an important skill! One of the most important parts of dragon keeping, even.  


And the issue with her, which she hated more than her own anxiety getting on the way of everything, it was that when she believed in a Cause™ she would do everything on her hands to get it done.  


“How can it be that you never had raised an egg! That’s so important! You need to learn even more than me!”  


Yamaguchi nodded, completely agreeing with the importance of egg raising in the dragon handling business. “So you are suggesting that I help you raise the egg?”  


“Well, I mean, only if you want…”  


“I want! I mean, if it is not a problem for you, and not a problem for the coven and your certificate and –”  


“Oh I don’t think that would a problem, I would love you to help, but only if you want and I mean I hope you don’t hate spending time with me and –“  


“I love spending time with you!”  


“Me too!”  


There was an awkward silence, which was easily broken by their laughs. They were not nervous laughs for once, which was quite unexpected for them.  


“If you want, and only if you want, please don’t feel obliged, we could try to spend more time together? I mean, we will have to take care of an egg together so we might as well try to get to know each other better and, yes, you know.”  


“Yes! I mean, yes. It would be perfect.” She said smiling. Her nervousness mostly gone now that she realised that he was as nervous as her, if not more.  


“It’s a date, then.”


End file.
